I love it when things come together… Like pieces of a (big!) puzzle…
More impressive with every additional layer of detail you add. Brilliant looking work man!
J
Excellent blending of everything, looking really good!
Hi, Tim, Your gated community looks pretty dang amazing, I must say!
And here’s today’s musical treat… 
Have a Happy CA-Mas and a Joyous Glue-Year!
—mike
Hi Tim,
Sorry I had forgotten that you and I were namesakes when I replied to your post on my Road to Singapore dio… you have done an amazing job bringing this uber-project to the new forum.
I admit that my eye’s began to widen when I got to the bit about making your own photo-etch for the railings… but it paid off!
Keep it coming and I will watch with interest… Bravo!
Happy Xmas guys & thanks as always, and a special thanks again to Erwin for finding the right font for that sign. As usual I only see defects – the “diamond” road sign’s not vertical nor is the railing the sign’s hanging on but my standard excuse applies, nothing’s glued yet. Yeehaaah Mike, Mr. Ed was really on point back then despite some weird dude on his back. No worries young Forster, if I had a dollar for every time etc. & yes the PE experiment was high risk. Over a liquid lunch last week my mega-railroad-layout mate asked me what I would’ve done if it had failed, if 3D printing wasn’t a viable alternative? I’m not often stumped for an answer but I was with that one, and I wasn’t even under the table…he’s (Northern) Irish I never stand a chance 
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Gee, thanks! I am always happy to help if I can!!!
And thanks Santa…
Suiting up for the final phase of this project, with at least 100 spare figures & as many body parts in the spares box to play with too. I’ll still need a bunch of Hornet heads (or similar) & sundry other accessories but it’s a start. In denial about how many of the 40 or 50 figures in the final Cast will need pre-modifying…probably around 95%. While the trees are now restored to a spring/summer appearance I still need to construct the overhead powerline matrix (and possibly the art-deco building on the south side) before I can finally declare the diorama base complete. Those things will probably make a good periodic rest-cure during the coming months when franken-figuring drives me totally crazy.
Now, about that van…
Way back in March 2018 Henri Pierre (Frenchy) kindly found an After the Battle issue from 1979 about Anthropoid for me. I’ve been re-visiting it recently to check if later research has confirmed or contradicted the article’s version of events, so catch some ZZZs or strap in for another research blitz.
It said that the first vehicle to be waved down to help the wounded Heydrich was a Zetka car carrying confectionery. But because the driver took too long to unload his stash (possibly because it was black market) to make room for Heydrich a second vehicle was stopped, a Tatra van laden with crates of furniture polish. Heydrich was put in the cab & driven down the hill but it did a U-turn and came back because the driver realised there was a shorter route to Bulovka hospital in the opposite direction. It stopped at the scene again (the blonde woman who’d hailed both vehicles still there), and with a passing policeman’s assistance Heydrich was moved from the cab into the back of the van to lie down on his stomach (still clutching his pistol) because he was in too much pain sitting in the cab.
It also said Heydrich’s limo was dark green, and that Klein & Gabcik engaged in “a wild-west-style shoot-out…as each exchanged shot for shot” at the scene, before their subsequent chase through side-streets. And It said a fourth agent (Opalka) was at the scene standing across from the bend watching for Valcik’s mirror flashing way up the road, signalling Heydrich’s approach.
The author(s) cited Pannewitz’s original official report as a primary source for the narrative. But that Police report was sanitised by SS sub-editors before being presented to Hitler to mask their various incompetencies. After the war Pannewitz provided a detailed and rather different account to American security officials, when he had no reason to lie…other than to minimise his involvement in the post-assassination siege in which all the fugitive agents died, and the ensuing appalling reprisals. So, taking the above aspects in order;
I can’t find any evidence Tatra manufactured vans in the 20’s & 30’s, only cars and big open-platform trucks like the T85. However, the rest of the account of Heydrich’s removal to hospital appears to have been taken from actual witness statements and sounds too detailed to be invention. Pannewitz implied the back of the van was locked i.e. enclosed like a panel-van. Whatever, for my purposes I can’t build a “Tatra van” or a Zetka (possibly a Z-series) either, because there are no suitable Czech-manufactured cars or commercial vehicles available in 1:35 scale. So for the only (?) time in this project I’ll have to compromise and go with plausible equivalents – the Simca 5, and the Mercedes Lieferwagen.
Moving on, Pannewitz (post-war) described how Heydrich insisted on being given his attache case before being helped into the van (and not his empty pistol as the article claimed), subsequently recovered by Pannewitz from the hospital. Interestingly he also observed Heydrich must have been thinking clearly enough and so should have assumed the van was a back-up vehicle for the agents. I’ve never come across that observation in any other publication but it’s the kind that suggests to me his account is authentic.
The limo was black, anyone can see that from the original photos & its consistent for all other SS VIP vehicles not in a war zone. The article was written around the time of the “barn find” of a similar limo painted green, the owner of which claimed it to be the real thing.
The “wild west shoot-out” – complete fiction as borne out by the police investigators’ own diagram detailing just 3 spent shells at the scene (all from Kubis’ Colt), as well as Pannewitz’s confirmation neither Heydrich or Klein fired a single shot. Gabcik subsequently wounded Klein outside a butcher’s shop several blocks away to make good his escape, but it’s unclear if the latter’s pistol fired a shot in anger even then.
A fourth agent at the scene? If he (Opalka) was there I don’t know why his escape wasn’t mentioned at all, standing just a few metres from the limo across from the bend. Being a co-SOE agent he would have been packing a Colt like Gabcik & Kubis, perfectly placed to run up to the limo from behind to finish the job or at least protect his co-agents. Sounds like yet more fiction, so overall a fairly inaccurate article although the Then & Now pictures are interesting – they reminded me the older house was still standing in 1977.
Next time: Alfred Hitchcock movie clip 1963 #TheBirds - YouTube
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Quite the line-up, excellent.
Excellent run down on the back story!
My present to myself this year was hobby paints and a few resin figs, all still delayed in the mail,
J
J
How time flies Tim…Your project has come a long way since March 2018 ! On a side note, Tatra did make some commercial variants of their cars in the 30’s (and we talked about this in April 2018)…Here’s a 1936 57A light van :
and a 1938 model :
But there’s still no 1/35th kit for it…
H.P.
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A 1938 model…and today they dub it a crossover!
Cheers guys & hello stranger glad to rattle your cage H.P.! Well, I could blame the nutter who’s put up most of the 1,193 images & counting on this blog for missing those pictures of a Tatra van, or the dummy who can’t do a proper image search, but I think the real culprit’s the Homer who just had a senior moment. Thus evading omelette-sur-le-visage via multiple personalities I immediately remembered them, many thanks for a second time.
OK so at least I was right about there being no kit. Except….
….hmm…anyone thinking what I’m thinking?
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Close, but alot of work.
To say the truth, I must confess I didn’t remember posting these pics in the old thread…But Google image search is a good friend of mine 
H.P.
Hmm… the basic shape is there, but enough details differ to warant a lot of work indeed… from fenders to shape of the doors, roofline, wheels, window shapes, etc… BUT, I love being proved wrong and sit back and wait for your conversion magic to take place 
For you Tim, a doddle; go for it!
Tim if you decide to tackle the job, Plusmodel Tatra 57K kit may provide some parts (providing the quality is OK…).
https://www.super-hobby.fr/products/TATRA-57-K-Kubelwagen.html
H.P.
Hah H.P. now I think I’m getting déjà vu about that kit too - I seem to recall the eye-watering price…and if that medallion means it was Model of the Year in 1998 it might explain why it doesn’t look so hot now. I can’t see any salvage in it - the radiator’s different, non-civilian tyres…OK the wheel hubs are good, so they’d cost out to around….US$50 each plus shipping! I wouldn’t need the chassis frame either, the wheelbase looks similar enough to use the Merc’s.
Argh I’m screwed now guys (and I’ll deal with you later Brian!) – I’m nowhere with CAD so 3D-printing the bodyshell isn’t for me, nope it looks like a bunch of Evergreen and oh yeah more DIY photo-etching looms in my immediate future. And I was soooo looking forward to building that Lieferwagen OOB, MiniArt’s going to blacklist me if I keep hacking their kits & figures to pieces like this 
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Only if you tell them, but I thínk I won’t (what’s in it for me, if I don’t?)